In today’s evolving threat landscape, the decision of whether to bring in external talent expertise is no longer optional. During the 2021 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit, we heard other facts and figures that aligned with the needs of our customers and of the market.

At the summit, Gartner analysts noted that organizations must have partnerships with MSS/MDR providers and security consulting firms if security is to enable corporate business objectives. Gartner backed its recommendation for MSS/MDR providers with data from a recent survey.

The analyst firm found that 26 percent of mid-size enterprises (MSE) -- defined by Gartner as organizations with $50 million to $1 billion in revenue – say they lack the in-house personnel to handle security. Gartner recommended that 5 percent of complete IT budgets in mid-size enterprises should be spent on security and that MDR providers align well with the needs of MSEs.

The analyst firm believes companies can close this gap by signing on with an MSS or MDR provider that brings top talent and expertise to the table.

Additional key takeaways that we found interesting from the summit included:

• The need for a modern security operations center (SOC). Gartner said a SOC must contain detection engineering, monitoring, incident response and threat intelligence. While an organization can take on all these tasks or fully turn over these tasks to a provider, Gartner said another approach might be a hybrid SOC – bringing in outside help to handle specific tasks. 

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• Cybersecurity leaders need to become strategic partners in their business, encouraging the business to build-in security as early as possible. This change is starting to occur, with Gartner estimating that by 2025 40 percent of boards will have a cybersecurity committee overseen by a qualified board member. 
• Privacy and data protection are now mainstream. Gartner predicts that 75 percent of the world will be covered under privacy laws. These new regulations mean a company will need to responsibly manage the data it collects, leading to a need for increased automation in privacy programs.
• External threats are now a key part of any business conversation. Gartner noted that every 11 seconds, a business falls victim to a ransomware attack.

Where We Go From Here

Organizations need to re-frame security within a business context and identify where there are risks and gaps in people, process and technology.

Security must continue to evolve to keep up with the threat landscape. This includes security operations teams learning to manage vulnerabilities and exposures while defending against ransomware, phishing and business email compromise (BEC). Additionally, security organizations must also secure modern cloud and production environments by ‘shifting left’ and thinking strategically about DevOps and DevSecOps.

As the needs of our customers and the market continue to evolve, we look forward to evolving our world-class MSS and MDR capabilities with even more powerful analytics, automation, and AI and ML technology.